at
Inverness—Its Habits.
It is
not generally known, we believe, that a wound from a stag's antlers,
however slight—the merest scratch or abrasion of the skin, if only blood
is drawn—is exceedingly dangerous. A short time ago [December 1874], on
ascending from the cabin of a steamer, we went forward in order to enjoy
an uninterrupted smoke in the fresh breeze that swept across the vessel,
when we noticed a fine-looking young man, closely wrapped up in cape and
plaid seated, in the shelter of the capstan, as if the breeze, to him at
least, was, if anything, too brisk and keen. Glancing at him once and
again, we observed that he was pale and sickly looking; and concluding
from his dress and caste of features that he must be a Highlander, we
went over to him and addressed him in Gaelic. It turned out that
although we did not know him, he knew something of us, and we were soon
on friendly terms. He told us he was going to Glasgow to consult the
doctors about a stag's horn wound in the thigh that was daily, in spite
of all the salves, ointments, and healing applications that he and all
the "wise" people of his glen could think of, getting worse instead of
better. About two months ago he was helping to take a stag off a hill
pony's back, when, by some accident, the sharp point of one of the tines
penetrated the thigh for a short distance, and then, by the force of the
falling weight of the head, rasped downwards for about an inch and a
half, leaving an ugly, ragged gash, though of no great depth. He thought
hut little of it, he told us, having often had more serious wounds
before, though not from a stag's horn, that gave hardly any trouble, and
soon healed of themselves—of the first intention, as the surgeons have
it. How it may fare with him among the Glasgow doctors we do not know:
well, poor fellow, we sincerely hope, though we shouldn't wonder if the
wound continued to trouble him all his life long. The subject of
stag-horn wounds having thus been brought before us in a way that could
not fail to interest us, we took the matter to avizandum, as the
sheriffs say; and, in dearth of anything better at this dull season, we
present our readers with the result of our inquiries in every direction
whence there was the least chance of enlightenment. Dogs wounded by
stags' horns usually die from mortification or gangrene of the wound ;
and even if the wound heals, and they recover, it is only in an
unsatisfactory sort of way, for they are almost always afterwards
paralytic in the wounded limb, or they are epileptic. An old forester,
who knows more about deer and deerhounds than anybody else we ever met,
tells us that in very few instances has he ever known a dog that has
actually bled at the touch of a stag's horn, recover in such wise as to
be fairly serviceable again. "With the least drop of blood in such
cases, they seem to lose all their courage. Another man, a shepherd near
us, says that a very fine collie dog of his was once severely wounded by
a stag in Glenarkaig, on Lochiel's estate, and that although the wound
healed satisfactorily enough, and to the eye of an ordinary observer
there was nothing the matter with the dog, it was, in fact, ever
afterwards perfectly useless. "Chaidh e gbrach, le'r cead." A good dog
before, "he became perfectly stupid, sir!" said the man. The
above-mentioned forester says that the poisonous character of stag-horn
wounds is well known to every one in the least acquainted with
deer-stalking, as the sport was followed in the good old
ante-breech-loading rifle days, when explosive bullets were yet unknown;
and that rough contact with the tines of the animal, whether living or
dead, was, in his younger days, avoided as one would avoid the tooth of
a rabid dog or a viper's fang. A stag antler's wound, he avers, is
dangerous at all times, but most so in the end of autumn—the rutting
season—or, as he put it, "an £in dhaibh 'bhi dol 'san damhair," when
they take to their "wallowing pools." Curiously enough, and by the
merest accident, we have fallen in with the following proverbial distich
from an old volume on Venerie,
or Hunting of the Buck, published
in London in 1622 :—
"If thou art hurt by boar's tooth, the leech thy life may
save;
If thou art hurt by buck's horn, 'twill bring thee to thy grave."
So that the venom of a stag's horn wound seems to have
been quite as well known two hundred years ago as it is now; better,
indeed, for those who followed the chase in the olden time were more
liable to such hurts than is possible in the case of the modem
deerstalker, when the aid of dogs and the "gillie's" knife to give the coup
de grace to
the "stag at bay," are matters of comparatively little moment. It was a
much more serious and risky affair in the days of the old
"flint"-bearing musket. There was a paragraph a short time ago about a
serious attack by a stag on some men in the island of Raasay. It would
be interesting to know whether blood was drawn on the occasion, and if
so, how the wounds have healed.
Hardly anything in our old Ossianic ballads,
of which we have such an interesting and ably edited collection in Mr.
J. F. Campbell of Islay's Leabhar-na-Feinne, is
so curious as the great number of dogs employed by the Fingalians in
their huntings,—that is, if we are to read the ballads with anything
like literalness. Fifty, a hundred, two hundred, and even five hundred
dogs are spoken about as freely as a modern sportsman speaks of couples.
In one ballad, for instance, recovered by ourselves, ten men, one of
them the balladist himself, the last remnant of the Fingalian host, are
represented as going to hunt in the "Glen of Mist," attended hy fifty
dogs a piece, or five hundred in all—surely an unnecessary, if not an
impossible number. In these ballads, besides, you find frequent
reference to scarcity of food, and the shifts the "heroes" were often
put to, to provide for the barest wants of the passing day; and yet, if
such an army of dogs was necessary, it also had to be fed, which one
conceives must have been a matter of some difficulty, when the heroes
themselves were, as the ballads inform us, frequently reduced to the
necessity of splitting " marrow bones," when all the flesh that covered
them had already been used up. The whole question of the natural history
of these old ballads is well worth more attention than has yet been
bestowed on it. Some day or other we shall devote a special chapter to
it. Meantime, let us merely say that we decided many years ago against
the authenticity and genuineness of one at least of Dr. Smith's
so-called Ancient
Lays, because
of the incorrectness of a reference to the natural history of a
well-known bird, the common pigeon. Here are the lines in Gaul which
first made us shake our head in dubiety over the genuineness of the
composition—
On which passage we would first of all remark that
pigeons are not berry eaters, and even if they were, they would not
carry them to (heir young in such wise as the poet clearly implies. A
pigeon itself eats the food meant for its young, and only after
undergoing a certain process of maceration and digestion in the parent's
crop, is it again regurgitated in form suitable for the young. In
genuine Gaelic poetry, the natural history is in a very remarkable
manner almost invariably correct. Here it was not, and we recollect
tossing the volume aside, and remarking that while much of Gaul might
certainly be " ancient," quite as much was modern, and that, wittingly
or unwittingly, Dr. Smith had been dealing in patchwork. Dr. Smith cites
a parallel passage to the above from Thomson's Spring—
''Away they fly,
Affectionate, and, undesiring, bear
The most delicious morsel to their young."
But the context shows that Thomson is not referring to
doves, but to Turdi and
warblers that build
''Among the roots
Of hazel pendent o'er the plaintive stream."
And these do feed their callow young as represented in
the poem, though the Columbidce certainly
do not.
We observe that Mr. T. B. Snowie, of Inverness, has
recently been so fortunate as to secure a specimen of the spotted
crake or Grex
porzana, a
very rare bird indeed, of which we never saw a living specimen. It
seems, however, to be a more regular visitor to our shores than is
imagined, specimens having from time to time been met with in almost all
parts of Scotland. Our friend Mr. Robert Gray, in his excellent volume
on The
Birds of the West of Scotland and the Outer Hebrides, writes
of the spotted crake as follows:—"So far as I have observed, the spotted
crake is a very uncommon species in the western counties; it is,
however, more numerously distributed throughout the eastern counties,
extending from Orkney to Berwickshire. In Aberdeen and Forfar shires,
according to Macgillivray, it can scarcely be called very rare. ' In
Scotland,' says Mr. More in the Ibis, the
nest has been found only in Perth, Aberdeen, and at Loch Spynie, in
Elgin; but as birds have been repeatedly taken in the breeding season in
Banffshire, Fife, East Lothian, and Berwick, it is not unreasonable to
infer that the species nest in these counties also. In the west of
Scotland, the spotted crake has been taken in Wigtonshire, Renfrewshire,
and Argyllshire; but I have no authentic instance of its occurrence
north of the last-named district. In its habits this bird closely
resembles its congener the water-rail, and, like it, is not easily
flushed from its haunts. Although a migratory species, the spotted crake
appears to come early, specimens being occasionally taken about the
beginning of April; as a rule, it also lingers much later than other
migratory birds, stray examples having been shot in November, December,
and even January, so that it is absent not more than two or three
months. It may, indeed, be yet found to be, in some of the southern
districts, permanently resident. From its shy and unobtrusive habits,
and its life of seclusion and silence in marshy places, from which it
but rarely issues, it is much less frequently seen than birds which try
to escape by flight when disturbed. Rather than take wing, it will
thrust itself, when molested, into any hole or tuft of grass, and remain
concealed until quiet is restored; and on this account the comparative
numbers of the species cannot readily be ascertained.' "
The bird is, however, unquestionably a vara
avis, a rarissima
avis even,
in the north of Scotland, and to have seen the bird as Mr. Snowie was
privileged to see and handle it, we should cheerfully have walked ten
miles, were it the coldest day in mid-winter.
